Overall pitch height as a cue for lexical tone perception

Abstract

Absolute pitch has been hypothesized to be involved in processing lexical tones in tone languages, which associate pitch information with verbal labels. Since possessors of absolute pitch in music utilize the overall pitch of a tone in making identification judgments, the hypothesis was tested that native speakers of Mandarin utilize the overall pitch of a lexical tone as a cue to retrieve its tone label. In a reaction time task, Mandarin syllables in all four tones were presented both in their original forms and also transposed to four different levels of pitch height; subjects listened to each token and judged whether or not its meaning corresponded to the original. It was found that although Mandarin syllables with transposed overall pitch heights were judged to be the same tones as the original tokens, subjects were significantly slower in making judgments for those syllables that were transposed to different levels of pitch height, compared to those that were presented at their original pitch heights. This effect was most extreme for tones 1 and 3. These findings suggest that overall pitch height serves as a cue for identifying lexical tones and further strengthens the link between absolute pitch and lexical tone perception.